It is a Wednesday night in Kresge, Room 4-420. For the past two-and-half hours, the eight-person cast of The Vagina Monologues has sat in a semicircle around their director, junior Alyssa Ramos.

As she flips through the script, Ramos asks the ladies a question, a matter of role distribution. This starts a chain of suggestions, a back and forth, open sharing of thoughts and opinions, each member eager to share her thoughts with the group.

“Last year they didn’t do a whole lot of in depth work on the individual monologues, like getting everyone’s opinions and getting everyone’s feedback,” says castmember and sophomore Elizabeth Owen. “That’s what (Alyssa) is trying to do right now.”

The controversial The Vagina Monologues is a series of speeches by individual women describing in great detail the ways they found their sexual identities, or in some cases, had them stripped away.

“It’s very much portraying these women as not victims, but people who are active and trying to explore, in different ways than usual, themselves and how they fit into the world and their bodies,” she says.

Ramos, who acted in the play last year, says she believes the key to doing the stories of these women justice is by mirroring the same level of personal openness within the cast.

“Last year it was really important to the director to make…us really love each other as people,” she says, “and actually be able to talk about everything the show talks about in relation to our own selves.”

This year, Ramos wants to take it a step further to instill the same candidness within the Northwestern community by making the production more present on campus. She hopes to work with other student groups to create outreach events that spread awareness of the content of Monologues and the issues it raises.

“It’s not glossed over and a lot of people have problems with that,” she says. “We’re trying to make it palatable by acknowledging the fact that it’s not easy to talk about.”

The controversial topics, such as pedophilia, rape and genocide may difficult to speak openly about, but Ramos refuses to accept it as an excuse to keep opinions, differing or not, under wraps. Audience members can participate in a post-show conversation, she says. “It’s all about engaging and evoking thought.”

The show will premiere in February.